A Culture of Disposable People – How I See It
(written 1996)
As we come eye-ball to eye-ball with the 21st Century, we face many new challenges and problems. Our nation has witnessed: increased drug and alcohol use by children (anyone under the age of majority); abortion as a growth industry (and complaints by rabid “femists” [sic] when it’s not); the whole “death with dignity” “assisted suicide” movement (Suffering, depression, illness, loneliness, old age, whatever.); easy divorce destroying our homes; transient relationships with “friends”; the “cocooning” of our society; corporations downsizing their workforces in a vain attempt to increase productivity while reducing costs. These are all symptoms of one central problem that we have developed in our nation over the past 30 years – disposable people. Yes, my friends, if people are too inconvenient, we can now just throw them away.
I believe that the era of disposable people is even infecting the work-place, as seen in the advent of the phenomenon of the permanently “temporary worker” and the “contractor agency”. Last summer, the Wall Street Journal confirmed what many of us already knew – that temporary hiring has tripled in the past four years, going from almost 3% of the labor force in 1992 to nearly 10% in 1996. It has become so difficult, so inconvenient, to hire someone permanently that many companies have institutionalized the notion of “contract workers”, those workers who can be hired and laid-off at will with no company responsibility.
In the past, most “temps” were found in clerical, low-skilled positions, held by people who provided secondary incomes for their families. Today, the fastest growth in “temping” is in high tech industries such as Information Systems and Computer Programming. (In a recent Sunday Chicago Tribune Jobs Section, over 300 of some 430 advertisements for high tech staffing were placed by temporary or contractor agencies – and this is about average! At a recent high tech career fair held in the Chicago area, permanent employers were outnumbered by temporary or contractor agencies at a rate of 6 to 1.) For some people, this is an acceptable career alternative, particularly if they are not the sole support of a family. However, for primary earners caught in this, it is a nightmare that can be almost impossible to get out of – nothing more than serial unemployment.
And employers who are living in this “dream world” of no responsibility to people who provide them with a labor force actually think that they are getting away cheaper than if they hired permanent workers. They aren’t, especially in high-tech fields. The agencies often charge much more per hour than they pay the employee – sometimes up to twice as much and more – and frequently provide no benefits whatsoever for the temps, pulling them off assignments to face lay-off just when they might have become eligible for any benefits the contract agency may have promised. Most of the time the client-employer has no idea that the worker who he has brought in this way must live so precariously.
It is my considered opinion that we started down this slippery slope when we decided that it was okay to throw away (abort) unwanted babies. You may think that this is a radical extrapolation, but think about it. Twenty-four years ago, this kind of employment situation (as well as all of the other manifestations of our culture of disposable people) would not even have been imaginable. And yet, it was only a matter of time. As our attitudes towards family/children go, so goes everything else in our culture. We should not be surprised when our attitudes toward people generally begin to manifest themselves in the work-place.
It’s time we got back to the roots of what made this country great – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – and the principles that made that possible – loyalty, integrity, responsibility, morality, hard work! All that impacts every level of our lives – employment, family, politics, education, everything.
That’s how I see it.
Original internet publication of this editorial can be found, here.